1. Field of the Invention
This invention is in the field of network connectivity and computerized devices, in particular methods of adding both computer network connectivity and optionally network control or monitoring to non-network connected devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many electrical devices can benefit from being networked to allow for easy control and monitoring. For example an automated watering system could be controlled by a remote computer, taking into account the weather forecast that was retrieved from a weather information provider.
Traditionally, devices that would benefit from being connected to computer networks have to be significantly re-engineered to achieve this end. Typically a communications interface has to be added, significant amounts of software and firmware have to be developed, and the product as a whole then needs to be subjected to wireless approvals testing before it can be sold. Often, buttons and indicators need to be added to the device to facilitate the configuration of the communications interface adding additional cost and complexity to the user experience.
Traditionally, to add such a connection to a device, the device vendor must add hardware to the device—both a communications interface and additional processing capabilities to deal with the burden of operating the interface. The development effort involved is not insignificant, and also places many additional burdens on support-software updates to fix bugs and add new functionality, assisting the user with installation and configuration of the communications interface. Usually, none of the aforementioned burdens are in the vendor's area of expertise, or related to the fields in which they innovate, hence distracting them from development of their core intellectual property.
Because of this vendor inexperience, and the high burden for any single company to develop an internet-based service for the devices to communicate with, allowing their states to be checked and behaviors controlled; most of the services provided for these devices are severely lacking, buggy, and do not take advantage of new technologies or potentially useful partner services.
The customers who purchase these network-enabled devices often have a poor experience with installation and operation of the network portion of the devices due to the often incomplete or buggy implementation of the network portion. In addition, the customers often find that no single vendor can provide network-enabled versions of all the devices they wish to control or monitor. As a result, they are often forced to use several different and incompatible controls or monitoring services, and often cannot link the results of monitoring one device to the actions of another device.
Prior art modular network interfaces include U.S. Pat. No. 7,702,821, which is sold as the Eye-Fi card. This card is a wireless enabled SD card—essentially a standard WiFi card in the SD form factor. Other WiFi cards, as well as other types of network cards including Ethernet cards, Bluetooth cards, and the like are also known. These prior art devices generally add the network hardware interface to the host device that they are installed in, but otherwise generally operate or act as “dumb” slave devices.